


Pressure Points

by HarrisonHolmes2014



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Beatles Music, Episode: s03e03 His Last Vow, F/M, Original Hooper-Holmes Child(ren), POV Alternating, Parentlock, Shakespeare Quotations, Sherlock Holmes Has Feelings, Sherlock Holmes and Feelings, Twins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-04
Updated: 2015-03-04
Packaged: 2018-03-16 05:59:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3477107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HarrisonHolmes2014/pseuds/HarrisonHolmes2014
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Charles Augustus Magnussen is killed, Sherlock, Molly, and their growing family have to deal with the fallout.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pressure Points

**Author's Note:**

> Continuation of "Chemical Reactions," "Burned," and "Blackbird Singing."

The key screeches in the lock as the warden unlocks my cell door. I listen to my visitor’s footsteps: steady and purposeful, a man’s judging by the weight of them. But I don’t greet him, nor do I open my eyes. Last night’s exertions, and the resultant lack of sleep, have rendered me too exhausted to bother with the effort of looking.

“Sherlock.” Mycroft’s clipped voice echoes off the cell’s concrete walls.

“Mycroft.”

“What you did was nothing short of foolish,” Mycroft says evenly, stating a fact rather than an opinion. “I told you that going against Magnussen would mean going against me, as well as the entire British government. As such, your attempt to hand over my laptop to him, whatever your motive, qualifies as treason.”

“Spare me the lecture, Mycroft. I know what I’ve done.” I finally open my eyes and glance down at my chest. Scarlet drops of blood pepper the front of my shirt. “What are the other charges against me?”

“Well, more specifically than treason, you have been accused of theft of government property and voluntary manslaughter. I managed to convince the emergency jury that the killing was not premeditated, thus not murder. Of course,” he adds, sighing, “with you, I can never be sure.”

I can’t help laughing a bit. “John once said I would make a fine criminal were I inclined to go against the law. Now I have proven him right.”

Mycroft’s face doesn’t show any sign of emotion, but he swings his umbrella as he always does when annoyed. “Sherlock, do try and be serious,” he scolds. “Killing a man with no apparent cause is nothing to laugh at.”

I close my eyes again, and visions of everyone I care about swim behind my eyelids. Not only the Watsons and Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson and yes, Mycroft too, but a certain curly-haired little girl and a woman in a white lab coat as well. Magnussen’s voice plays back in my head: _I am sure that you and Molly Hooper will have a very happy life together, with your daughters and son. _Just as I did when he spoke those words, I feel a shudder of rage, disgust, creep down my spine.__

After the shivers fade, I speak. “For once in your life, Mycroft, you’re wrong.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You’re wrong,” I repeat. I keep my eyes closed, holding on to the visions of my pressure points, wanting to never let them go. “I killed a man. But I had a cause.”  
____________

My mind’s racing. It keeps replaying the voicemail I got from Mycroft Holmes last night: _Sherlock is in jail and I’m afraid I can’t allow you and Moira to visit him. He’ll be back at Baker Street tomorrow to explain himself. _Leave it to a Holmes to skip the essential details. I’ve been on edge all morning, picking up random books and trying to read, only to chuck them aside when I can’t focus. The same question circles obsessively in my mind: what on earth did Sherlock do?__

My edginess hasn’t been lost on the other people in the house either. Moira, of course, noticed Sherlock didn’t come home last night, so she asked me where he was. I told her he was still working on his case. What else could I have said? That her dad’s in jail and I have no clue why? She may be able to understand the situation, but that doesn’t mean she should have to.

Even the twins have noticed the tension. It’s not even one o’clock yet, and I’ve already gotten a good five or six blows to the inside of my lower abdomen. These two have been a lot more restless in general than Moira was, but I’ve never felt this many kicks and punches in such a short space of time.

Finally, I hear the front door creak open downstairs. As I stand up from the sofa, Moira charges out of the kitchen, where she’s been conducting another experiment: soaking pennies in lemon juice to see if they get shiny. She pounds down the stairs, an ability she came so close to losing. At the foot of the stairs, Sherlock’s deep voice murmurs a hello to her. Then Moira asks a question that makes my heart skip a beat or two.

“Daddy, why’s there blood all over your shirt front?”

Sherlock mutters something about dissections in the lab and starts coming up the stairs, and two sets of footsteps follow him. I watch from the doorway as Sherlock comes into view, holding Moira with his good arm. Her dark brown curls and high-cheekboned face only grow more like his as she gets older. The only difference between them now is a burn scar on Moira’s left cheek, from last winter’s car accident. Looking around them, I see two hard-faced soldiers armed with machine guns standing behind them.

Sherlock closes the door in the soldiers’ faces, harder than he has to. Carefully, he sets Moira down in the sitting-room, and her black cat Khan comes running out to greet them. Following close behind is my Christmas gift from Moira: Severus, our new black-and-white kitten. As the two cats rub against Sherlock’s legs, leaving fur all over his trouser cuffs, Sherlock says to Moira, “Run off to your room and play. Mummy and I need to talk.”

“Can’t I listen?” she asks, frowning slightly.

“No. Not this time, darling.”

“Why not?”

“It’s complicated.” I can’t help noticing the grim tone in Sherlock’s voice, and the way his mouth has straightened out into a thin line.

Moira sighs, but she says, “Okay.” She puts her arms round Khan’s middle and hauls him up, and to his credit he tolerates it, only narrowing his green eyes a bit in exasperation. Moira smiles at both of us and walks off, Severus staggering behind on his ungainly kitten paws. Her bedroom door closes in the hall.

As Sherlock turns back to me, I can’t take the suspense any longer. “Well?” I demand. “What the hell is going on?”

For a moment, Sherlock’s eyes dart down to the floor. He doesn’t have many tells for what’s going through his mind, but that one appears when he has bad news. “You should sit down,” he says, gesturing at the sofa.

We sit, and after a long pause, he speaks. “Molly, I’ve been exiled.”

My blood runs cold. “What?” I gasp. “Why? _What happened?” ___

With many pauses, Sherlock tells me the story. How Charles Augustus Magnussen had been blackmailing Mary Watson and torn apart the trust between her and John. How, during Sherlock’s meeting with Magnussen to negotiate a deal, Magnussen had apparently threatened me, Moira, and the twins as well. How Sherlock and John had paid Magnussen a visit to destroy the file on Mary, to find that his massive archives of information on his enemies only existed in his head.

“So, you see, I had no choice,” Sherlock finishes at last, his face pale. “I could allow him to continue destroying John and Mary, and give him the chance to strike our family next, or I could kill him. So I took the only option left to me.” He stops, and adds with a touch of irony, “I give him credit for this: he was always spot-on in identifying pressure points.”

I don’t bother asking what that means. It doesn’t really matter right now. Instead, I ask him, “How long?”

He sighs. “Six months,” he says. “But…”

“But what?” I ask, fear squeezing my heart from that one dangling word.

“It’s for an MI6 mission,” he says quickly, as if he thinks getting the words out faster will hurt less. “Something in Eastern Europe. Mycroft told me that what I will be investigating is of a…sensitive nature. That no enemy of Britain must ever discover the information I will be working with, even after the job is finished.”

Sherlock’s trying to avoid telling me plainly. But I know all too well what he’s getting at. I close my eyes, not wanting to see him confirm it. “They’re sending you on a suicide mission,” I hear myself whisper.

“Yes.” Sherlock’s hand clenches on mine, so hard that pain shoots through my fingers, but I don’t want him to let go.

“Jesus,” I groan. Again, I hear myself say it, as though I’m eavesdropping on someone else’s pain. “Oh, Jesus, _Jesus…” _Finally I open my eyes and stand up, wandering aimlessly towards the fireplace, my back to him. I glance down the hall at Moira’s room. “What are we going to tell Moira?” I ask.__

“The truth. If we try to tell her anything different, she’ll know instantly.” I turn, and watch him stand and cross the sitting-room towards me. “I can tell her I have to go away for a while, for work. But I’ll tell her that I’ll be back,” he says. He stops short, then adds quietly, “It won’t be a lie. Mycroft promised to arrange for my remains to be brought back to England.”

“Don’t,” I beg him, putting my face in my hands so I won’t have to look at him any longer. I can’t, not when I know that the man I love, my children's father and the man who was going to be my husband, is a dead man walking. “Sherlock, please don’t say any more…”

His arms come around me, one long hand gently pressing my head into his chest. Somehow, I draw comfort from the contact, even if his shirt stinks of blood. “I’m sorry, Molly,” he says. “Forgive me.”

I don’t know what he means: forgive him for his comment, or for the fact that he has to abandon us. And I’m not really curious which it is. I don’t know if I’ll ever feel curious again. For a long time, Sherlock and I stand in the sitting-room, not speaking, listening to the rush of passing cars on Baker Street below.

Strange how, even when your world is falling to pieces, life marches on anyway.  
_________

After my conversation with Molly, I step into Moira’s room and tell her that I will have to leave in the morning. She’s upset, understandably so: the night I met her, she asked me to not leave her and Molly again. Nonetheless, my promise to come back comforts her, and more importantly, she believes it. Why shouldn’t she? I’m telling her the truth…most of it.

The rest of our evening bears some resemblance to normal. I help Molly with the cooking, chopping onions and crushing garlic cloves as she stirs her famous pasta sauce. As we cook, Moira tells us all about her most recent experiment. She proudly shows me the dish full of lemon juice, and the gleaming pennies inside it. Khan and Severus sit on the kitchen counter, purring whenever Molly slips them a piece of sausage, Severus pawing harmlessly at Khan's twitching black tail.

As she usually does when cooking, Molly puts her old iPod on, and I watch Moira singing as she sets the table. Her voice is perfectly an octave above George Harrison’s as she accompanies her favorite song by him: _“Little darling, it's been a long, cold, lonely winter / Little darling, it feels like years since it's been here / Here comes the sun / Here comes the sun, and I say / It's all right.” ___

I notice everything. How is it possible, then, that I’ve never quite registered how strong her voice has become, her fantastic sense of pitch, or her talent for recalling lyrics?

Molly sends Moira to bed shortly after dinner, and Khan and Severus take up their nightly post outside of Moira’s room, guarding her. Molly retires not long after. Amazingly, she kept her composure throughout the entire evening, chatting and managing to laugh at Moira’s jokes. Even though she knows the whole truth of what’s going to happen to me, she kept it hidden so that Moira would not have to suffer.

Not so long ago, I would not have recognized the bravery in this. But to make any sacrifice for the ones you love, even one as seemingly small as Molly’s, is one of the most profound examples of courage I’m aware of. No one embodies that lesson more than the woman now behind the bedroom door. Trying to push the ache in my chest away for now, I let myself in.

As my eyes adjust to the dimness, they fall on a dark shape in the bed. Molly’s head turns almost imperceptibly, indicating that she’s aware of my presence, but she doesn’t speak. I keep quiet as I get ready for bed and lie next to her. I lay one arm over her, and my hand rests above her womb, above our two new children, our twins. My only pressure points I will never meet.

Best to try and not think of it like that. “How are they?” I ask, lightly tracing an arc on Molly’s stomach with my thumb.

“Asleep, I think,” she answers in a flat voice. “They haven't moved for a bit.”

As she says this, she slowly rolls over to face me. Her fingers twine around my hand, and my grandmother's amethyst-set engagement ring brushes my skin, warm from Molly's body heat. She nuzzles her head into the spot where my neck meets my shoulder, and I’m amazed there’s no dampness on her cheeks. But then, perhaps I shouldn’t be. Underestimating Molly Hooper is a severe mistake.

After a few minutes, she speaks. “Sherlock?”

“Hmm?”

Her Adam’s apple bounces against my shoulder in a swallow. “I want to name them. Before you have to go. And I want you to choose.”

This is a bit of a surprise. I look down at the top of her head and ask, “Why?”

“I chose Moira’s name,” she says quietly. “It’s your turn now.”

In spite of the situation, I smile a little. I mentally review all of the names we’ve discussed, the dozens of beautiful possibilities: _Julia. Claire. Benjamin. Eliza. Sean. Michael… _“Moira’s already suggested the middle names,” I remind Molly. “Shakespeare and Watson.”__

“Pick your favorite names, ones that sound good with those,” she says.

That isn’t difficult. Out of the long list of names, I liked these best of all. "Ruby and Hamish. Ruby Shakespeare and Hamish Watson.”

I feel Molly give a reluctant smile at this. “Ruby Shakespeare Holmes. Hamish Watson Holmes,” Molly tests it. “They both sound good. And you gave him two of John's names.”

Before I can say anything about her use of my surname, she adds, “I want Hamish and Ruby to have your name. Moira too, I’m going to get it changed.”

For the first time since I told her what will happen, Molly’s strength falters. Her fingers start trembling in mine, and her shoulders grow tense. She hides her face in my shoulder, and her voice cracks as she says, “If your name is the only part of you our children can know, I won’t deny them that.”

I can’t think of what to say to this. I want to comfort her, that’s what I’m supposed to do, but I know that nothing is very likely to help. It will all just be empty words. So, instead of wasting my breath, I hold her as tightly as I can and hope that it will be enough. She doesn’t make any sound, but I can feel tiny warm, wet drops sinking through my shirt. It’s all I can do to not imitate her.

Molly has been the strong one all evening. It’s my turn now.  
__________

The alarm on Sherlock’s phone shrieks at us around 6:30, shaking us both out of a rough night’s sleep. I watch him as he gets up and dresses, dragging a comb through his hair, grumbling in pain at the usual snarls and knots. It all seems so normal. Hamish and Ruby are already wiggling around and bringing on the nausea, and I hear footsteps in Moira’s room down the hall. Severus and Khan even stride in, mewling for me to get up and help Moira give them breakfast. This illusion of normality is as good as a slap in the face from the universe.

None of us talk much at breakfast. Out of human kindness, I give the soldiers in front of the door some toast. Sherlock’s hand clenches in a fist and Moira glances at the door whenever a crunch drifts through the walls. I keep my eyes on my plate, trying to ignore it all. But the little details of our lives insist on getting in: the burns and scratches all over the countertops from experiments, the handwritten sheet music lying everywhere, the ragged old bear that John gave Moira sitting sentinel on the table.

A tidal wave of emotions threatens to take hold of me and drown me in it. I want to grab Sherlock and hold him in my arms and tell him everything I yearned to say last night as we both lay awake. _I’m your wife and no one else’s, and it’s going to stay that way. I’d do anything if it meant you didn’t have to go. I’ll never forget you. I love you. ___

But I can’t seem to get it out. I’m scared it’ll only make all of this worse.

Too soon, a brisk knock at the door breaks the silence. I answer it, and Mycroft strides into the house, the two soldiers following. Mycroft cordially inclines his head to me, and I content myself with a stiff nod. Moira comes out of the kitchen, Sherlock following, and she freezes at the sight of our visitor. Her eyes narrow coldly, but when Sherlock squeezes her shoulder, she says flatly, “Good morning, Uncle Mycroft.”

Mycroft says good morning to her and turns to Sherlock. “Your car is here, Sherlock,” he says calmly, nudging the cats away with one foot. “Say your goodbyes.”

“Wait a minute,” I snarl, fury rushing through me. “You mean to say that Moira and I, _his fucking daughter and wife, _can’t watch the plane take off?”__

“Molly,” Sherlock says quietly, a reminder that I shouldn’t curse in front of Moira. But I ignore him, keeping my eyes on Mycroft and remembering some choice words from Shakespeare: _If mine eyes can wound, now let them kill thee. ___

“I’m afraid not,” Mycroft says. “The emergency jury members would only allow two to accompany him, so I called the Watsons. I thought that most equitable, since Sherlock was allowed to stay here last night and thus see you and Moira.” He pauses, swinging his black umbrella in an almost awkward sort of way. “The jury members also thought it best that as few people as possible see off a murderer.”

“Don’t call my daddy a murderer.”

Moira says it so quietly that Mycroft could pretend he didn’t hear it. But she glares up at him, her hand clenched on her teddy bear’s arm, her cheeks red with anger. And after a moment, I realize what else is there, something I’ve never seen on her face before: hatred. Her blue-grey eyes burn with it as they shift to green in the sun, with such fire that I’m surprised Mycroft doesn’t back away. Though I don’t blame her, I feel a tiny twinge of regret for her. At only three years old, she knows what it is to hate.

Mycroft wisely doesn’t respond to Moira’s command. “Say your goodbyes, Sherlock,” he repeats. “Your guard and I will wait in the hall.” In the second before he turns away, I wonder if that’s a pitying look in his eye. Then he closes the door, leaving us alone.

Sherlock kneels in front of Moira, placing both hands on her shoulders. My mind races back to the night they first met, when he did the same thing. “Now, Moira, promise me you’ll be a good girl while I’m gone,” he tells her, looking straight into her eyes. “Keep taking good care of Khan and Severus. And help your mum look after your brother and sister when they get here.”

“What did you name them?” Moira asks. When Sherlock’s eyebrows contract in surprise, she blushes and admits, “I heard you and Mummy talking about it last night.”

Hmm. I wonder what else she heard. If Sherlock’s wondering this too, he hides it well. “Ruby and Hamish, darling,” he says, a small smile tugging at his thin lips. "Hamish Watson and Ruby Shakespeare Holmes."

Moira smiles. “I like those names.”

“I do too.” Suddenly, he pulls Moira into a hug, one hand in her wild hair. I close my eyes, wishing I could be anywhere but here, watching this. “Be good now,” he reminds Moira in a shaking voice.

“I will, Daddy.” I hear him start to stand up, and Moira asking, “Have you got something in your eye?”

“Yes. Just dust.” I feel his hands on my shoulders now, but I still can’t bring myself to open my eyes. Until he says, “Molly, please look at me.”

I do, though it takes all my strength. And once I start looking, I can’t stop, even though knowing it’ll be the last look makes my heart scream. I drink in the sight of him: the dark curls and oddly bright kaleidoscope eyes, the shadows on his cheeks. As I did the day he left England, after we fooled the world into thinking he was dead, I want to burn every detail into my mind forever. Without saying anything, he leans down and kisses my cheek.

The door opens. As if from many miles away, Mycroft’s voice says, “It’s time.” Sherlock holds my gaze for a moment before he turns away, flipping up his coat collar as if he's just heading out for a case. Slowly, he follows Mycroft and the two soldiers down the stairs. Moira comes and stands beside me, her bear under her arm, her small fingers curling around my hand. She squeezes it slightly, and that tiny squeeze tells me she heard more of my conversation with Sherlock last night than the twins' names. She’s well aware that he isn’t coming back. But as I glance down at her, I don’t see any tears. Just a bit of a sad smile.

We stand at the door, even after the swish of car wheels announces they’ve left, staring into the dark hallway that seems to have swallowed Sherlock whole.  
__________

_“Did you miss me?” ___

The words swirl round and round in my head like some sort of sick, twisted mantra. How is this possible? I watched Jim Moriarty die, watched him put a gun in his mouth and blast a hole in his own head. So how, almost three years later, can his face be popping up on every screen in England, his voice be blaring from every speaker in the nation? And, even more baffling and terrifying than how: why?

I breathe for a moment, trying to pull myself back together as my plane moves back to ground. I focus on the name, the name whose case can help me work this out: Emilia Ricoletti. She was seemingly dead, shot in the head just like Moriarty. And yet, she came back from the dead to avenge herself on the man who betrayed her. It was all a ruse, and someone else was the true perpetrator of the abominable bride's crimes. By analogy, someone else is the perpetrator of Moriarty's reappearance. It's clearly one of his schemes - his fingerprints are all over it - but the man himself is undeniably dead.

Panic bites at my brain once more as I wonder: but who is that perpetrator? And even more crucial is this realization: I can't possibly be the only target.

When I step off of my plane, I assure John, Mary and Mycroft that I will do my very best to solve this mystery. But before I do that, I have to make certain of something. I clamber into the car Mycroft hired and tell the driver to take me to St. Bart’s, trying to calm the mad pounding of my own heart. I don’t know if anything is wrong yet. It’s pointless to worry.

Yet, somehow, reminding myself of this more logical reaction is not helping.

“Please, can’t we go any faster?” I implore the driver. The man nods shortly and speeds into London. The grey steel and warm, brown and white stone of my beloved city flash past the windows, and I should be celebrating that I’m staying after all. Spending two years away from London felt like being dead. But I almost don’t perceive the blurs of buildings and bare trees as we race towards St. Bart’s. All I can think about is that building in particular, and how much I need to get there as quickly as possible.

At last, we pull to a halt outside the hospital. I throw a random pound note at the driver for a tip and burst out of the car, banging the front doors open and flying down the halls past bewildered doctors and nurses. Something feels like it’s bubbling in my stomach, like acid burning my insides, and I recognize it in an instant. It’s a feeling I was able to control until quite recently. I felt it when I dragged Moira from a flaming cab and saw scorched, blistering flesh where her legs were supposed to be. I felt it when Molly was refusing to speak to me for my drug slip-up. I felt it when Magnussen threatened my family.

This feeling is called fear.

Do they know? Have they worked it out, realized that the one Moriarty thought meant nothing to me is actually everything? And what does this stranger know of my children, my son and my daughters, innocents whose mere genetic link with me has thrown them into their path? A path engineered by a ruthless madman, a devil sent straight out of hell! Whoever's done this, if they do know, if they've discovered my four worst pressure points just as Magnussen did…I don’t even want to imagine it. I blast through another pair of doors and thunder up the stairs, the fear that’s been bubbling inside me for the past half-hour winding up to fever pitch.

At last, I reach the black doors leading to the morgue. Both of them will be here. Moira finds the human body fascinating and loves to watch the autopsies being made. I explode through the doors, and terror finally rips a name from my throat: _“MOLLY!” ___  
___________

BANG. The doors to the morgue burst open, even drowning out the echo of Jim’s voice in my head. I saw it on the telly in the canteen as I got Moira a snack. His wild, madly staring eyes and the lips I kissed once (why in God’s name did I ever do that?) repeating the same four words: “Did you miss me?” I panicked and ran back to the morgue with Moira, where I armed both of us with scalpels and told Moira what to do with hers if she had to.

I whirl around at the sound of the bang, scalpel at the ready. It’s not much, but if Jim’s coming to pay me back for helping Sherlock escape, at least it’s something. I’m not going down without a fight. And he sure as hell isn’t touching Moira, who’s been calmly seated on a spare body table since we ran in here, examining her scalpel like it's a mildly interesting book.

All of these thoughts fly through my mind before I fully register who’s charging into the morgue and yelling my name at the top of his lungs. Before I catch a glimpse of his face, his arms pull me in and almost crush me. Two trembling hands hold me close, and I can hear him drawing in ragged, shaking breaths. I know him, I recognize the smell of his coat fabric. An odd mix of lab chemicals, old gunpowder, and just a tiny hint of spaghetti sauce…

“Sherlock,” I stammer. “What – ”

He swallows the rest of my sentence with a kiss. Somewhere in there, the scalpel drops to the floor, but we both disregard the tinkling sound of the metal. When he breaks away from me and I put my hands on his pale face, his skin is freezing.

“Molly,” he stammers, planting kiss after kiss all over my face. “You’re safe. Thank God…”

He must be scared. I’ve never heard him thank that before. “Sherlock, it’s all right,” I tell him. I’m starting to get worried now: his breathing rate should’ve gone back to normal, but he still sounds like he just ran fifty miles. I hold him tighter, willing him to calm down. “It's all right, I'm all right.”

Finally, Sherlock takes a few deep breaths. Some of the color slowly returns to his face. “Where’s Moira?” he asks, looking around the room.

At the sound of her name, Moira seems to snap out of a shocked trance. She launches herself from the body table, tossing her scalpel aside, charges at Sherlock, and throws her small arms around his leg. Finally letting go of me, he scoops her up and hugs her. “Moira,” he murmurs into her wild dark curls, starting to laugh with relief. "Moira - "

“Daddy, you’re back!” she cries, her smile making her whole face glow. Then she starts bombarding him with questions: “Who’s that man, the one on the telly? Is he a bad man? Mummy told me to stab him with a scalpel if he came in here.”

Sherlock sets Moira down and beckons me close again. One arm around me, one hand on Moira’s shoulder, he tells her, “That man on the telly is a very bad man, Moira. I’ve come back to figure out what he’s doing on the screens.”

“So are you back for good?” she says, clutching the edge of his coat, her wide blue-grey eyes begging for a yes.

“I think so,” Sherlock says. In spite of the terrifying situation, he gives both me and Moira a smile. His eyes dart down to the bulge that is Hamish and Ruby under my lab coat, and his smile grows. He hugs both of us again. As I close my eyes and lean against his chest, I hear Sherlock say quietly, “And I promise you this: all the devils in hell couldn’t take me away from you again.”


End file.
